Critical thinking (CT) is an essential skill in today’s ever-changing society. Yet, the influences of instructional strategy, a crucial factor of educational outcomes, on the development of CT remains unclear. We proposed that the instructional strategy played a significant role in fostering CT and aimed to explore the complex neural mechanisms underlying this relationship. To address this issue, we adopted a mixed-methods approach that combined questionnaire and functional near-infrared spectroscopy (fNIRS) to explore the impact of watching various instructional strategy videos (lecture-based, teacher-student interaction-based, and group discussion-based) on CT learners’ subjective experience (i.e., perceived interaction, learning effectiveness, teaching effectiveness, emotional valence, emotional arousal and difficulty of learning tasks) and brain activation. The study involved 41 university student volunteers aged 18 to 26 from various academic disciplines. The results showed that the CT learners reported more positive experiences regarding interpersonal interaction, instructional efficacy, and emotional arousal in the group discussion-based instructional mode. In particular, the prefrontal cortex (PFC), which is associated with mentalization showed increased activity during the teacher-student interaction and peer discussion conditions, suggesting that social interaction in teaching and learning supports the cognitive foundation necessary for openness in CT learning. In contrast, relying solely on traditional didactic teaching strategies resulted in a more negative experience for CT learners. Our study provides multimodal evidence of an essential mechanism through which classroom interactions promote the development of CT. Additionally, it offers valuable insights for future CT pedagogical models, emphasizing the importance of creating opportunities for students to interact with both teachers and peers. © The Author(s), under exclusive licence to Springer Science+Business Media, LLC, part of Springer Nature 2025.
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